Everything I need to know about collaboration I learned from my kid

For some reason, it just occurred to me that the difficulty in collaborating when “not in person” is a bit like five year olds at play.  My son doesn’t like talking with his friends on the phone.  Of course not, he’s only five after all.  To play effectively he feels he must be over at his playmate’s house, the friend at our house, both at the park, etc.  For five year olds, playing is no fun unless you’re in the sandbox together.

For too many adults, collaboration is not practical when you’re not in the conference room together.

Replace “house” with “office”, “playmate” with “colleague” and you get the picture ….  What’s worse is that we make these decisions unconciously.  To collaborate effectively at a distance requires deliberate, conscious decisions to do so, and constant effort.

The patent is granted!

Patent #7,512,655, aka “System and method for managing information and collaborating” was  granted by the US Patent Office on March 31.  Congradulations to all my former colleagues.  My part in that effort was small, but it was a huge honor to work with such an amazing team of technologists.

It took almost 10 years, but it finally came through.  Congrats guys.

Cheers,
Eric

Reprise of an old rant

You know – for all the advances in collaboration technology over the years, it’s still a d*mn challenge to collaborate at a distance.  Even worse than physical distance, are distant timezones.  And the competition for those scant overlapping time slots.  When you are separated by distance, you miss out on watercooler conversations, quick “FYI’s” from colleagues about the someone’s mood or an interesting/important visitor.  You miss out on the general vibe, color and mood of the workplace.

When you are separated by timezones, there is fierce competition for those few hours when “your” timezone and “their” timezone overlap.  It’s no coincidence that Outlook calendars around global businesses are booked solid daily from 8 am to noon New York time (1pm to 5pm London).  So… you need to get through to that important stakeholder in London – but you are booked solid during those time slots?   And they are booked solid during those time slots?  They’re free at that time in two weeks, but that’s too far out.  You need to speak with them sooner.  What to do?  The inevitable:  Your day inches earlier another half hour to catch an open timeslot.  Then maybe another hour.  Then folks in your time zone start doing the same thing.  Then folks across the pond start suggesting earlier and earlier meeting times because they see you’re willing to meet then, and because it’s the only time slot.  It’s like an arms race.

Off-topic remote worker tip

Recall my earlier musings the use of chat for the remote worker… well …. just to show that that’s not the only dead horse I beat, here’s another, non-chat/IM suggestion for when working from home/remote. Get yourself a mimio whiteboard capture tool. No need to buy the $1000 fancy new ones at retail. You can get an old serial-based model on ebay for $50 and they still work just fine. Put yourself a regular ol’ whiteboard in your home office. Attach the mimio and calibrate it. Aim a webcam also at the whiteboard. Lassoo the whiteboard session in the mimio software with VNC or LiveMeeting, and then “broadcast” your whiteboarding session to your colleagues/customers across the net. Oh – and a speaker phone, which I’m assuming most everyone has these days now anyway.

The mimio gives excellent high-resolution fidelity of your drawing, and captures it digitally. LiveMeeting makes it possible for others to see it in real time. The webcam session, which you’re also broadcasting in parallel, adds an important spatial dimension. You can point to areas on the whiteboard, gesture, etc. and your audience is right there with you. For under $100 you’ve just built a very inexpensive and effective collaboration/presentation solution.

Cheers,
Eric

so…. you’re working remotely … now what?

We’ve all seen these articles before ….. The perils, pitfalls, pros and cons of working from home or working from the office. The temptations cited by some commentators, such as sleeping in or slacking off in front of the TV, I would say are not <ahem> location-oriented problems. Rather those are personnel-oriented problems.

In all seriousness, the important discussion is on the unique tools required to ensure maximum productivity and optimum customer service whether from the office, home, or otherwise remote from your constituencies. Consistent with the subject of this weblog, persistent group chat (PGC) is a powerful adhesive for remote and far flung teams. PGC enables members to communicate as a team would – in a forum. Vanilla IM (such as consumer apps for the unwashed masses) only lets you do 1:1’s or trivially small groups. Imagine the power of having your entire department, plus internal customers, in 4 cities across 3 time zones all online. Collaborating. With, oh yeah, a free transcript of the session captured automatically and with zero effort (where your EIM/chat client supports logging).

I’ve seen this take a major leap of faith for some people. And it can take adjustment – taking what was previously verbal and tacit and taking the small extra effort to type it up. But group chat is a huge productivity multiplier, and worth the shift.

Cheers,
Eric

SocialText announces new business-grade capabilities

http://www.socialtext.net/data/workspaces/st-press/attachments/socialtext_press_room:20080417133906-0-25002/original/08_17_04%20Socialtext%20Dashboard%20and%20Socialtext%20People%20Advances%20Business%20Social%20Software%20-%20FINAL%20ISSUED.pdf

The Missing Feature: Teleconference integration

Picture yourself on a conference call for work. The call is just getting started and you hear the little “beep” of people dialing in. You then take a roll-call to see who all is on the call. Here’s the thing – are you really sure you got everyone in the roll call? Are there any lurkers? What about the inevitable late joiners who interupt the first speaker, and you have to ask “Hello, who just dialed in?”.

So – instead imagine this. You’re dialed in to your conference call, and as people connect and you hear the “beep” on the phone, you also see their name and phone number/extension in a chat window. “John Smith, 646-555-1111, has just connected at 9:02 AM.” And further… when they disconnect a similar message.

Vendors, analysts and alot of IM/chat users drink the koolaid about video integration or audio chats. Blah blah, who cares. Much simpler and basic integration would actually be useful, although perhaps less sexy on brochureware.

Cheers,
Eric

Telco’s collaborate on emergency text messaging

BetaNews is running a story that several major US telecomms companies are working on proposals for an emergency text messaging system, similar to the emergency broadcast system for TV in place since the Cold War. The target apparently is for the system to be in place sometime around 2010.

Looks like they’re only looking at mobile phones now, though. Would be interesting to see if there’s any interest in the future in extending it to other media, such as public IM systems or virtual worlds.

Cheers,
Eric

Whitepaper on Microsoft OCS integration with Public IM

This is a vendor whitepaper, but these folks are a littler newer to the block – maybe they have something interesting to add to the mix. They’re pitching their new product to “federate the un-federated” public IM products. Allegedly lets you leverage the security features, etc of OCS for the all-but-obligatory connections IT managers have to maintain with public IM systems for their users.

Cheers,
Eric

FaceBook to add chat functionality

via Yahoo news earlier today:

“… the company confirmed recent reports it is working on a new instant messaging chat feature that runs inside Facebook, allowing users to hold spontaneous back-and- forth chat with their friends on the site.

Facebook Chat, as the feature is known, will be introduced in a matter of weeks, the company said. It works inside a Web browser without requiring that users download any special software, akin to services such as Meebo.com to allow one-on- one chats.”

Cheers,
Eric